Tiberion

So, today was a bit of a mess. Seems like I'd solve one thing (or find that I couldn't due to a stock issue) and would discover two more. Re Aerospike thrust, typo in the config; key = 0.8 300 was set too 200, so the curve went from 280 down to 200, and then from 200 back to 320. Whoops. Trying the big LF Booster @ 2500 thrust, also lowered drymass from 11 to 10 Soyuz I dropped down to 800 There's probably more that need it, so if you find anything else wonky post it up. I'm also not terribly worried about balance in the end since I imagine more drag changes will come eventually, so lets not aim for perfection for now. Freyja heatshield isn't going to use ablation; stock issue with heatsinks means that any part with fuel in it is extremely hard to heat up, so the heatshield won't pass the 500degree threshold to use ablation. it maxes out at about 350 on a decently fast re-entry, but it also gets that hot in space from radiative heat, so I can't lower the threshold. So.. no ablation for now. Freyja seems to re-enter properly for me. Can you take a screenshot of the vessel when its trying to flip? Working on that I found that the pod floats below the waterline, and due to another bug (or something) I can't raise it. Thankfully you can use reactionwheels to flip it sideways enough to get the door exposed, and then use SAS to hold it in place if you need to eva into the water for some reason. Also ran into another parachute issue.. solving that tomorrow. Sorry about the delayed test update, but I think (and hope) we're getting closer at least.

Nope, absolutely not. We know Squad is having a business meeting (and skydiving) in Mexico this week, and several people who work remotely have traveled there (Kasper, Mu, Romfarer at least) - this meeting includes future planning for 1.1 and beyond (and skydiving) Could they develop another hotfix inbetween discussions about 1.1 and plummeting to the Earth? Sure, maybe. I wouldn't hold my breath though (unless you're training for swimming or something, in that case continue) Note: the skydiving is great news. Its presumably written off as a business expense for research purposes; an all new parachute implementation (Most of this post has been Not Serious - but still, it's not something I'd expect soonish. Usual disclaimer: I have no inside knowledge about this subject)

Okay, lots of progress today. Finally got parachutes working! Also did most of the chore list we've compiled so far. Here's the list: Parachutes. - fixed Odin heatshield attachment - fixed (mostly) Yawmaster SM attachment - done More smoke! -done added gimbal range - needs testing! fixed mini-decoupler gap engine flameout sound: stock bug with non ModuleEnginesFX-based engines removed ModuleSAS from reactionwheels, pods, added sizenodes where appropriate Bearcat 3x thrust 2400 -> 2500 - done Heavy Struts - fixed? Add Abblator - done Freyja re-entry orientation Odin heatshield not using ablator Nerf LFBooster massively Radial chute wobblyness No idea why the odin shield isn't heating up at all, have to investigate that one more. And that Big liquid booster is just silly, gonna nerf it down to at least 3k thrust instead of 4, we'll see how that works. As for overall balance.. I dunno. Most engines you have to keep at half throttle through 10 or 15k to keep them from hitting the mach barrier and flipping or breaking. That doesn't feel terrible when you play it though, and otherwise its pretty reasonable payloadwise Make some hard recommendations about what you'd like to see and I'll push another test version tomorrow evening which should hopefully be the last one before a release.

I expected a beach party and all I got was sand in my shorts.

The stall speed thing isn't really a setting thing, more of a simplification for gameplay's sake. All wings behave as hybrids, where they adapt to be very glidy when needed while still allowing fast speeds. Put more simply, there aren't 'glider wings' and 'high aero wings' there are just wings which pull some shenanigans to function reasonably in most cases. If you went to one extreme you couldn't have a high altitude glider, at the other nothing breaks the sound barrier. One side effect is the wonkiness at landing, though in a lot of cases that is still being caused by too many wings (and thus too much lift) Perhaps more granular wing function is something to request going forward. There's a right way to do that. Do keep in mind that there going to be a limit to how much fidelity the flightsim aspects can contain before the game becomes too complex for most people (and thus should be left to a specialized mod... if only we knew someone who does that sort of thing..) and more complex wing simming might very well lie beyond that line.

Well turning down drag again is certainly not going to achieve that; it would only satisfy the "build things out of wings" contingent. There ARE things to balance going forward (heating rate, and probably engine balance, but it would be a fractional change, not drastic) but no one can objectively say 1.0 was more realistic, only easier.

1.0 Aero was not in any way better, it was entirely undertuned in such a way that there was no challenge in launching anything from the surface. It required specifically trying to build a rocket incapable or orbit to actually fail. Any rocket with a positive TWR accelerated through 30k within the 1st 30 seconds and there was never a cause where "full throttle" was a good idea. Spaceplanes could travel Mach4+ basically at any level and there was no "barrier" at the sound barrier. Re-entry displayed the opposite problem, since you would not encounter any drag-induced slowdown until you went below 15k altitude there was no re-entry curve, there was a gravity powered death plummet until you slammed into the atmosphere at 10k, at which point your heat-shield either saved you or it didn't. Angle didn't matter, distance didn't matter. I'm sure this was known, but left in place to make it easy so all the people making the change wouldn't freak out. You all of course freaked out anyway, so it was all for naught. A quick bump to a more sane setting has been rewarded with more freaking out and negativity (and far more snarky images than actual feedback sent to the proper places) I'm not saying its perfect. It'll receive more changes at some point i am sure. But I wouldn't expect a massive rollback and frankly you should all move forward and begin adapting.

I... ... ...yes? Right. --------------------- Still no luck on the parachutes, working on the other stuff for now.

For using Unity and Part tools for making parts, you should probably stick to 4.2.2, since that is the optimal version for Part tools (the updated animation system in Unity after this makes it harder to use it for KSP) - this is according to Mu as of a few days ago still I believe.

@Aanker You can keep repeating that stuff all you want, it does not align with the reality of the situation. You will not be made whole again, so I suggest moving on or be prepared to remain unhappy. You may think something "Looks more aerodynamic" but that doesn't mean it IS within the DESIGN OF THE GAME. if you thought that was the case before this update you were fooling yourself, you were using broken mechanics to make something that looked cool because the limits were not in place. People have already demonstrated several times now what IS possible, including some reasonable uses of the old techniques. Your extreme, overbuilt edge cases are dead. Keep raging, or not, but that is reality. I've had more than enough of this by now, so good luck with the crusade.

So we've successfully drilled down to the heart of the matter; planes actually work fine and its still pretty trivial to make a plane that will get into orbit. What HAS been eliminated is the ability to freeform construct things out of piles of wings without giving any thought to how it would fly. You can't have 20 air intakes and 100+ wing segments because they add a HUGE amount of drag; This is entirely realistic, and ANY sane aerodynamic system would have caused this. Quite frankly you were exploiting the extremely limited flight system before and I am sorry to say that time of your life is over (with stock settings anyway) Three things to do: Explore the new system and learn more about aircraft. Learn how to build again, challenge yourself to work within the (now sane) limits you have. There are now real actual engineering challenges to experiences. It's like graduating from Legos to model rockets. Welcome to KSP! Create a new install and then set up sandbox via settings, the alt+F12 debug menu settings, and what you can change in the Physics config file in the KSP directory; with that you can probably set it up where your zany planes with 400 parts will fly again. You can finally deliver that VCR-shaped plane to Bob on Eeloo. (Does anyone even know what VCRs are anymore?) Create or add CONSTRUCTIVE feedback to an appropriate thread asking for a feature to use wing parts as structural pieces again. Leave out the hyperbole, don't claim that Squad hates you or what you want to do. You might also find a mod that enables this as well. It's not going to go back to the way you want it, but it's not the end of the world.

I am wondering if more gimbal range would help stability - I hate to turn it up because it makes SAS act insane with some builds. I might also have to reduce engine mass and dial back the thrust a little to get close to the same TWR, since having all that mass at the bottom is a lot of the problem. It s certainly more challenging, which is good in the long run.

I am having zero luck converting my Novapunch chutes into functioning parts for 1.0.x - they seem to animate and deploy correctly as long as they're oriented right in Unity, but as soon as physics kick in they apply weird directional drag, spin around and then explode due to aero forces and heating - if you deploy directly into fullDeploy mode (say under 500m) then it'll sort of jitter wildly and then fling the pod in some direction when it explodes. We tried endless things last night to solve it without luck. If you have a working chute can you post its setup in Unity. Also, how do you animate it? To try to solve your horizontal drift issue, try flipping the direction your chute is oriented to locally (make the canopy point +Z locally then add 90 degrees rotation in Unity to make it look right) - Mine seem to deploy in the right direction now, they just don't behave properly afterwards.

It's not realistic unless you use 150 wing parts in your design. Come on man, know the basics.

Boy thats weird, those people in the thread showing off all their SSTO planes must be wrong then. You should go over and let them know to stop flying them.

Don't spam wingparts (or other parts) I know it looks cool and it was awesome to build a shoebox and fly it into space like a jetplane, but don't do that, it doesn't work anymore. Even that jet in your 1st picture is overbuild You can also change the settings, use the debug menu or edit the physics file and make it super easy again if all you want to do is build the Empire State Building and then launch it to Jool. Nothing stopping you. However when it comes down to either having a proper simulation or allowing you to build a flyable Star Destroyer, the simulation should win.

Alright, excellent feedback going on here. Looks like the 1.0.1 aero tweak made drag down low sane again so you don't accelerate through mach before you clear the tower Got all the new issues added to the list; still working on chutes here, they are well and truly broken. I spent 6 hours last night working with some modders who know the module well, and after numerous model and animation changes and much config file gymnastics.. nothing helped. If anyone has got your custom chute model working in 1.0.2 I'd appreciate some details how you have it set up

So parachutes... they don't work. They do flip out weirdly and then explode, so that's fun. Starting a new 'things what are broken' list. guess I should have tested 1.0.2 more, this NPrelease is less functional in it than I thought. Keep testing if you can though.

Launch clamps, tis what they're for. It's a bug/inaccuracy thing with part to ground colliders, working around them in all cases is messy. Edit: I just got the Odin shield to attach, seems to be a camera/mouse issue. Pan up so you're looking at the side of the shield and not a bottom quarter view, and then snap it in place, once its snapped, pull your mouse down towards the bottom node and it will light up like it'll attach (and it will if you click) before your mose un-snaps the part from the pod. I'll see if I can tweak the node, but it may be an actual bug. Still not sure what the deal with the yawmaster is.

Yeah I made the changes from 1.0.1/2 - it was mostly just tweaked the orbital engines thrust again and a few heat tweaks. not sure what the deal is with the heat shield now. Having a similar issue with the Yawmaster service module, though it won't even snap. The big engines will definitely need more smoke, but I can't add too much or it'll slow down the game. Also, with a 1.07 TWR on that pile of tanks, good luck getting anywhere like that (but seriously though, I expect there may need to be a big across the board maxthrust nerf anyway, lets test it all out and see)

This is why: 36 million subs, already 3 million views. I mean, I'd rather eat sand that watch him, but if you want to bounce your <insert whatever here> off of as many eyeballs on Youtube as you can, that is probably the way to do it.

Youtubers and Twitchers are in the media group and get access to early builds but don't have full experimental access (so no direct access or requirement to squash bugs) but hey are still under an NDA and the rollout of preview content is coordinated with Squad. Modders have a similar group for the same purpose, with access to builds and info but not a part of the exp team. So they can do early work, but that isn't always as easy as it seems since testing can result in big changes happening between builds, and a lot of work going down the drain. So its a balancing act. Of course modders and media dudes have also always been a part of the experimental teams (and QA) as well, but as Flowerchild says that comes with responsibility to actually be a tester and modding comes after that. Slacking off during tests gets you a frowny face from Ted, and you don't want one of those

Okay then, got everything done. Had to go back and revisit some of the changes I had made a couple days ago and finished everything up. Changes: Engine ISP, heat production, some thrust tweaks, addition of trench/ground effects (not customized at all yet, just to get them working) Maximum Heat of all parts Fixed Parachutes Fixed winglet parts Fixed all bottom attachment nodes Added "size" sorting for parts menu in VAB (size0 through 3, and srf where appropriate) Added ablation to Odin Shield and Freyja pod (this may not work right) Cloned the stock fairings and added a huge 5m-based version - they all split into 2 halves (but they still break into vertical pieces) - In the future I want to change the texture and maybe use the old bases, but they'll work for now. Moved some things around in the science tree, only took a cursory look What I didn't do: Convert to DDS Do any real playtesting whatsoever. This should be fun. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46506740/NovaPunch2_Testfor1_0_x.zip So, there's the test version. Just the gamedata folder and the license, no documentation, instructions, or example craft included. THIS IS A TEST VERSION. If you are at all worried about your save game breaking or your computer exploding then use at your own risk, and I am not responsible for anything that happens up to an including the cataclysmic end of the universe (this probably won't happen) But seriously, this is pretty raw, I flew a little bit yesterday and basically just clicked through some stuff earlier, but I wanted to get it out there to test so I can make an actual release before Christmas Please report in detail what you find that's broken or feel is under/overpowered or just dumb. Maybe a rocket can go Mach12, or maybe it just collapses on the pad. It's possible. (More likely than the cataclysm thing) So yeah, there ya go. Enjoy

They did redact it, several times. not in a PCGamer article though.

Another thing to keep in mind, they announced they were going to do multiplayer in that PCGamer article, but they also said around that time that it wouldn't be under active development right away because they still intended to get "scope complete" before tackling it. That has only recently happened (0.25 to 0.90 timeframe) If you do go back and read the devnotes between the announcement and now you'll see that there has been people working on it off and on, mostly core design and then server/backend stuff, so it has been moving along at its own pace. I personally am glad they havent dived into it yet, I wanted them to get a lot more of the "core game" finished and polished up, which as of 1.0 is much closer to reality (not that there isn't lots left to do)